Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @06:59PM
from the a-turn-for-the-worse dept.

Slashback tonight brings some correction, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including more news from the BlackBerry case, a follow up on the South Korean Cloning pioneer, China promising a strong continuation in space exploration, a behined the scenes look at Smart Hotel technology, a change in direction for the Massachusetts OpenDocument war, and a slightly different approach to the intelligent design in schools question. Read on for the details.

BlackBerry closer to a shutdown.WebHostingGuy writes to tell us MSNBC is reporting that Research in Motion Ltd, the company who makes the BlackBerry is nearer now to a shutdown of their US mobile email service than ever due to the recent ruling handed down. From the article: "U.S. District Judge James Spencer Wednesday ruled invalid a $450 million settlement between RIM and NTP Inc., a small patent holding firm of McLean, Va., that maintains the technology behind the popular BlackBerry infringes on its patents."

Cloning pioneer admits to wrongdoing and resigns. moraes writes "The first research group to clone human embryos ran into some ethical difficulties concerning the source of the eggs - allegations were made indicating that the eggs were taken from junior research assistants. The South Korean pioneer, Hwang Woo Suk, has since resigned his official posts and apologized for lying about the sources of eggs used.."

China on the moon by 2020.IZ Reloaded writes "China will send its astronauts to the moon by 2020 according to the Deputy Commander in Chief of China's manned space flight program. Hu Shixiang said that the goal is subject to the government's funding and their ability to build a rocket with 25 tons capacity."

Behined the scenes with Cisco.molotov writes "Cisco installed the system described in the recent Slashdot article about Smart Hotel Rooms in New York City and has a great video about the technology used in a similar project for the Mandarin Oriental Hotel."

Massachusetts gives Microsoft a second chance. An anonymous reader writes "CNet is reporting that Massachusetts is considering adopting the MS Office XML format as a standard to be used to store the state's documents now that it is under review as an ECMA standard. From the article: 'The commonwealth is very pleased with Microsoft's progress in creating an open document format. If Microsoft follows through as planned, we are optimistic that Office Open XML will meet our new standards for acceptable open formats.' Microsoft still does not intend to support the OpenOffice standard." IBM also took the time to weigh in on the issue with a recent letter to Thomas Trimarco.

University sued for supporting evolution.Hikaru79 writes to tell us that two parents are suing the University of California-Berkeley based on the contents of a website aimed at educating teachers. From the article: "Jeanne and Larry Caldwell, the couple bringing the suit against the site, claim that the site delves improperly into religion. While most debates center around whether or not Intelligent Design is "religion in the classroom," the Caldwells are looking to spin it the other way."

It appears that politicians and bureaucrats are, after all, mental retards, because they will indeed buy into the notion that if a convicted monopolist puts the word "open" in front of some non-open "standard" (which is itself an abuse of the very notion of a standard), then everything is A-okay. I'm beginning to think that the majority of human beings are sub-standard intellects who deserve to be kicked around by the Napoleon of Redmond and his spooky, violent sidekick Steve "Stinky" Ballmer. I mean, to think that anyone could be some severely mentally challenged that they would buy into this bit of Microsoft's bullshit can only point to mental capacities hovering close to that of brain damaged squid. Such people should be put on display as examples of how retarded the average citizen is that they don't demand and physically force the removal of such an individual should they somehow find themselves in a position of responsibility, even if that position is taking a shit without some help.

In closed discussions politicians decided open formats were required to open closed data exchanges. M$ offered a closed word format opposed to the open 'open office' format as they were closed to an open format, thus opening an opportunity for M$ to close the open exchange of data. They could not open thier closed format and they wern't open to implementing an open format so they offered a closed open format. This has closed out the open format and keeps the closed format close to the open closed document f

Until the recent news we were considering replacing our Treo's with blackberries. The Treo's have proven to be too fragile for use by the sales and executive staff. Drop it once, and it usually dies. The black berries are more durable in our experience. T-Mobile is our carrier and they have told us then intend to stop selling the Treo's because they get so many broken ones returned that they are losing money!

First, common, be original. Last time there was an article about NTP and RIM I'm pretty sure there was the same comment about the BlackBerry just being something for your boss to email from while speeding down the road. And as you can see by the vast number of different sigs here on/., you don't have to have a BlackBerry to have your sig say "Sent from my BlackBerry".

That aside, if you are referring to the fact that only execs can afford it, let's take a quick peek at prices here. I can get the newest BlackBerry (8700r) for $499 or I can get the Treo650 from the same provider for $899...hmmmm

I use a BlackBerry 7290 for my cell phone, and it's pretty decent, I can hear the other person, they can hear me (even in noisy environments) and that's good enough for me. Have you happened to have noticed that the BlackBerry is an EMAIL device, not a phone? You cannot tell me that the Treo can do a better job at email. But the new BlackBerry sure does an amazing job at being a phone as well as an email device.

I get an attached doc, xls, pdf, ppt, jpg, gif, txt, etc on my BlackBerry and I have no trouble opening it up and viewing it...so that can't really be considered a death spike.

Obviously your company doesn't take security too seriously if it would rather have every employee using POP to check their email that is sent plain text over the wireless network....as apposed to having a single port open for outbound initiated connections only and full 3DES or AES encryption of messages on the wireless network.

And "technically" you don't even need special software to use a BlackBerry for email (before you pounce, yes it is email only, not attachments or wireless synchronization) because you can use the desktop redirector.

This brings up another point. I'm sitting on the bus, I schedule a meeting with someone, and automagically that meeting is in my calendar at work....or how about being out at a conference and getting someones email address...that contact is now synchronized wirelessly to my contacts at the office.

So, let's see what else people will fire back with....It can't do music. Well, no, but that's what my MP3 player is for, and it sounds a hell of a lot better than ANY pda does.

It doesn't have a camera. No, but then again it also doesn't have a crappy camera. If I need to take pictures I'm going to bring my digital camera instead of the crappy ones I can get from a cell phone or pda...have you seen the quality of most of them?

It doesn't do video playback. That's ok, I don't like watching video on a 2.2" screen anyway....hurts my eyes.

It doesn't have an SD slot. I'm actually up in the air on this one. Given what the BlackBerry actually does, I don't see a need for an SD card. If it did multimedia, then maybe, but then you get into SD or miniSD? What about security? etc.

The point is that not everyone WANTS or NEEDS all the functionality that the Treo offers, and the core components that most people want/need are offered in both.

Why the parent was modded to +4 Interesting is beyond me. Is it because one company switched from BlackBerry to Treo? Was it because of their opinion that the phone calls sounded better on the Treo? or was it the rehashed comment about Execs only using it for the Sig?

Sorry, I forgot to mention that the prices I quoted were $CDN and not $USD.Both prices were taken from the only GSM provider here in Canada.

I'm not too familiar with Good Technologys product, so I won't comment on that. If it can do all the same wireless stuff, then hey, that's cool.

It's interesting that you bring up VNC, SSH, JAVA...cause I have all three loaded on my BlackBerry right now. But I'll let you keep on with your GPRS connection for VNC while I remote to my computer over EDGE (and I'll even po

My understanding of the situation is that the man behind NTP DID try to innovate and bring a product to market, but his product failed in the marketplace (it was a few years ahead of the market's interest or need of such a product).

So RIM comes along a few years later, and makes a device that supposedly uses very similiar technology that the patent covers, and makes big bucks with it.

RIM said in a statement that it would continue efforts to get the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case. The company also reiterated that it has prepared a software upgrade that can be used to work around the disputed patents.

Several analysts believe that RIM is likely to avoid an injunction by settling, whatever the cost. At the moment, this all certainly makes me glad that I use a Treo.

China on the moon by 2020. IZ Reloaded writes "China will send its astronauts to the moon by 2020 according to the Deputy Commander in Chief of China's manned space flight program. Hu Shixiang said that the goal is subject to the government's funding and their ability to build a rocket with 25 tons capacity."

The Chinese have a huge population and apparently an unknown AIDS victim population that keeps growing. Some estimates are in the 10+ million range.

China is full of amazing scientists that have been making huge advancements. Why are they pushing so hard for the space race and not for eliminating AIDS and opening their *real* numbers of infection to the world?

I'm unimpressed with anything they do until they get their ass in gear and stop w/the human rights issues and the government coverups that go along with it. That includes ANY country, not just them.

For example, what would happen to medicine today if we were to take out all the advances in materials and microelectronics due to the space race? No more fancy hip replacements, no more CT and MRI scans, etc. Heck, even finding yur records would be a huge drain on resources.

China is full of amazing scientists that have been making huge advancements. Why are they pushing so hard for the space race and not for eliminating AIDS and opening their *real* numbers of infection to the world

Um, because the research knowledge, skills and interest do not transfer well between things like celestial mechanics and materials engineering on one hand, and biomedicine and disease control on the other?

This kind of thing always seem to crop up, and implicitly assumes that "science" is one monolithic activity within which people are essentially interchangeable. They aren't. Specific skills and talents - and personal interest, which is hugely important in develop the other two - are very different across disciplines. A really, really good physicist could perhaps become a middling plod of a physician, though their heart wouldn't be in it. More likely, they'd become a really good engineer, designing new DVD player models or Hello Kitty merchandice instead.

Besides, there is no nation on earth without poverty, AIDS or [insert favourite physical ailment here]. What are you doing posting on slashdot when you should be working on your medical degree?

Please mod parent up. I'm so sick of whining "Why are they doing X instead of ignoring all their interests, talents, and passions and trying to cure AIDS?"

Parent is exaclty right, this isn't like a video game where you just focus your society's scientific developments towards aids research. In real life people have different interests and goals, and not everybody sees their destiny as curing AIDS.

And who knows what developments a quest to outerspace could unearth that might be relevant to AIDS! Remember, science and technology do not evolve in a linear fashion. Don't believe me? Just watch any of James Burke's Connections series.

Now...if you want to make an argument about a government aiming in one direction and not another, perhaps you should be discussing their budgets for the alotted programs. Of course you run into the same issue which is that a government cannot simply devote all its resources to one endeavor. Just like any proper investment, you need to DIVERSIFY FOR MAXIMUM GAINS WITH MINIMUM RISKS.

"Hu Shixiang said that the goal is subject to the government's funding and their ability to build a rocket with 25 tons capacity."
Good news then, finally something that will be able to lift american space tourists:)

Wouldn't it be something if before someone was given mod points, they had at least some ability to demonstrate that they knew something about the world around them, including recent history? it seems, sometimes, that mod points are given to some genuinely retarded people, who probably should be beaten with their computer and shouldn't be given anything more complicated that a box with a light and a button on it.

In Soviet Russia, they didn't have God telling them how He'd designed the world and everything in it. Instead they had Comrade Lysenko [wikipedia.org] telling them how to increase agricultural yields through methods that sounded plausible but didn't have a hope of working. It mightn't have been so bad if he didn't have the ears of Uncle Joe and the party machinery...

The more heated the debates over the teaching of creationism/evolution get, the more I worry that it's actually education itself that's being threatened. The article gave a very snarky summary of the learning process - teachers teach, and hopefully the students learn - and it's that very process that's continually being challenged. If this debate leads to a massive shift in favor of homeschooling among parents who oppose the teaching of scientific theory, there will be serious problems in this country.

Also, their argument is partially based on the fact that the site is government funded. Does this mean that eventually private institutions are going to be the only places allowed to teach without getting hassled? Schools shouldn't operate under fear of suit.

Look, it's simple. The only thing science and religion have in
common with each other is that they're both methods people use to
try to make sense of the world around us. Period, full stop, end
of the matter.

Science holds most dear that which can be objectively,
repeatedly, independently verified. Religion, on the other
hand...religion is nothing without faith.

And a person with faith is one who makes conclusions about that
which he has concluded is inconclusive, has knowledge about
that which she knows is unknowable. Faith is not ``willful
ignorance,'' but rather ``willful insanity'' or ``willful
idiocy.'' Faith is a thing deserving not praise and respect, but
pity and scorn.

To equate science with religion in this context in an attempt
to force their superstitious mindfuck on people is just about the
most reprehensible thing I can think of--especially when
you consider that these people would be dead without modern
medecine, and that modern medicine wouldn't exist without that
oh-so-hated cornerstone of science, the Theory of Evolution.

Maybe you should read some M. Scott Peck. He argues that science and religion - well, spirituality - aren't that different. He argues, and correctly I believe, that people that question to the point of being agnostic or athiestic are more advanced spiritually than zombies in a church building, be them fundamentalists or progressives.

Both are a way to make sense of the world. Conclusions from science will come and go just as do religions. A better model of the world will be developed in physics one day, the Big Bang theory may change, just as deism is in its dying throes.

This is a pretty odd claim. The only scientific theories I know of that were actually tossed out were some early views on the geological evolution of the planet. Theories are very rarely ever thrown out. They may be subsumed into another theory (as Newtonian mechanics was subsumed into Relativity), but scientific theories are such rigorous entities, and based solely on the evidence, that it's very unlikely that theories will be outright thrown out. Whatever replaces the Big Bang is still going to have t

Let's ignore for a moment anything that isn't an aspect of the extant world -- so, no "historial theories" like the discovery of Troy. And we'll let the computers count.

Humors - the idea that our bodies are controlled by four distinct fluids, whose proportions to each other determine our health and general character. Earlier theories about how the heart worked focused around this one. The pre-modern practice of bloodletting was tied directly to this one.

Columbus's theory on the size of the planet. (No one else wanted to go not because they thought the world was flat, but beause Columbus undershot the estimated size of the world by about 50%)

Life on the Moon: "From the Earth to the Moon" was closer to Science Fiction than Science Fantasy

Hollow Earth: Once a rather well-respected theory, as recently as the 20th century still considered a plausible position.

Infinite Divisibility: There was a time when the concept of both atoms and cells was unheard of in scientific discussion. If you just kept cutting something, you would keep on getting smaller and smaller things of generally the same nature as the larger things.

Bad Air: A theory that disease was caused by the aroma of swamps, graves, illenss, and other forms of decay. Can be considered a variant of Humors.

Atomic Holocaust: Before Truman gave the OK to test the first atomic bomb, there was a scientific theory that such a detonation would ignigte the helium in the atmosphere and destroy all life on Earth.

Spontaneous Genesis: My favorite dead-theory (the debate over Intelligent Design is really between I.D. and S.G., if you go back far enough). Rather than having all creatures under the sun born from like creatures, scientific minds once held that life sprang naturally fron an environment -- a frog would spring from a swamp, for example. (Frogs are actually a good test for this, as if you don't realize that tadpoles are baby frogs you don't have any baby Frogs.)

Merchantilism: A theory about human behavior is still a scientific theory, and the idea that a nation's economic health is best measured by the gold in its coffers took a long time in dying.

Alchemy: The granddaddy of all debunked theories. At the time of the dawn of science, all learning was in the form of Alchemy -- its mystic and purposefully cryptic overtones hid the foundations of what became chemistry, but those foundations were wrapped up in a theory of how things worked that was fundamentally different than even early medieval chemistry.

Homosexuality as a mental illness: Medicine is also a science.

Freud's picture of the Psyche: While Freud was the pioneer of his field, his actual theories have been largely discarded. Even those that still practice Freudian psychoanalysis generally use different theories to guide in their interpretations.

Yes, that's somewhat broad, but I don't see why you need to call those who are religious idiots or insane. Let's not forget there are plenty of scientists out there who also happen to be religious. Just because they have faith doesn't mean they stop searching for the answer to questions.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but I almost certainly can
prove that your god doesn't exist. I've a rather good track
record at proving various deities to be as real as a married
bachelor.

Tell me a defining characteristic of your god--something that,
if your god didn't have it, it would be nothing--and I'll tell you
if your god could even possibly exist outside the realm of fantasy
and illogic. For exampl

My God is neither omnipotent, omniscencient, nor morally perfect. He is also non-coporial, and non-physical. He simply drove the creation of the universe, and set into motion the events that resulted in us.Why isn't he omnipotent? Because he can't intrude upon freewill.

Why is he not omniscencient? Because this causes too many problems with him knowing the result of a freewill choice before that choice is made, thus leading to a paradox. The only way I can resolve that paradox is with God being less tha

modern medicine wouldn't exist without that oh-so-hated cornerstone of science, the Theory of Evolution.

What is this argument based on? The fact that both modern medicine and evolution are both "modern", and must therefore be intimitely interrelated? What, exactly, about anaesthetics, or surgery, or germ theory, or gene theory, or antibiotics, or you-name-it related to modern medicine depends on the idea that all life is descended from a common ancestor? And if it wasn't the "common ancestry" part of evolu

Kind of funny how the comments that are pro-faith ( or at least tolerant to faith ) don't get modded up like the anti-faith comments. I thought the beef was as much about people being bigots as it was about who's "theories" stand up best in a lab... but I digress

To me, the funniest thing about this whole debate is how nobody seems to see that science and religion don't need to be stepping on each other's toes. They provide answers to two completely different questions. Science asks "how" and religion asks "why"? What's the problem with that?

Being a believer myself, I can understand the need some folks feel for having faith in their life. It gives us hope, resilience, and teaches us how to find happiness and peace.

But believing doesn't mean that I can't see the value of science - I know that my life is quantifiably better because of medicine and other technologies, and I'm very thankful for those as well.

I guess the bottom line for me is that science doesn't try to tell me how I should live my life, and relgion doesn't tell me all of the nuts and bolts of how I came to be alive. They both have their own domains, and they are both very important within their own bounds.

Fundies trying to teach religion in a science class is just as shameful as a scientist saying that I'm deluding myself by believing in something that he/she hasn't experienced.

We are apes. We exhibit a degree of dimorphism between the sexes in that males tend to be larger. Other than sexual dimorphism there is little in the male's repertoire to court females as is seen in the bright plumage of birds and other species. One thing that distinguishes us from other speicies is our relatively big brain and, as an outgrowth of our big brain, language. Our brain uses huge amounts of resources and, it's been suggested, is co-evolutionary with growth of our complex social organization.

> Faith is a thing deserving not praise and respect, but pity and scorn.

Ah, the legendary inclusiveness and tolerance the left is famous for is again on display for all to behold. NOT.

Listen up moron, boiled down to the basics every 'religion' is just an attempt to understand the universe. Science is just one of the many religious belief systems practiced on this world so why don't you just learn a little tolerance for those with differing beliefs.

As a question for thought, let's examine this situation. Imagine that 66 separate documents, which were written by 40 different authors over a period of 1500 years. Now imagine that there are no conflicts in these documents--that they have the same basic ideas. Here it is: http://www.netbible.com/ [netbible.com]

As a question for thought, let's examine
this situation. Imagine that 66 separate documents, which
were written by 40 different authors over a period of 1500
years. Now imagine that there are no conflicts in these
documents--that they have the same basic ideas. Here it is:
http://www.netbible.com/ [netbible.com]

BWAHAHAHA! BAAWA!

Oh, my. Sorry 'bout that, but the ``no conflicts'' is just too
much.

Don't you know that Joseph had two daddies? (Matthew 1:1-17 v
Luke 3:23-38)

Perhaps you would suggest that it's Jesus's supernatural
abilities that permitted him and Mary and Joseph to both flee to
Egypt (Matthew 2:13-16) and to go straight home to Nazareth (Luke
2:22-40) after he was born?

Tell me, where did Jesus go after he was baptized? Did he spend
forty days in the desert fighting the Devil (Matthew 4:1-11 and
Mark 1:12-13), or did he go to that wedding in Cana where he did
the Bacchus trick (John 2:1-11)?

Did Jesus come to abolish the law (Ephesians 2:13-15 and
Hebrews 7:18-19) or not (Matthew 5:17-19 and Luke 16:17)?

Who were the Apostles (Matthew 10:2 and Mark 3:16-19 v Luke
6:13-16 v Acts 1:13,26)? You know, the twelve dudes who spent
the most important period of history palling around together
with Jesus? Four of whom tradition says wrote most of the New
Testament? I mean, you'd think that you'd be able to remember who
it was you ate the Last Supper with, fer chrissake....

Did Jesus remain stoically silent at his trial (Matthew
27:11-14), or did he wow the crowd with his eloquence (John
18:33-37)?

What were Jesus's last words? (Matthew 27:46-50 and Mark
15:34-37 v Luke 23:46 v John 19:30)

Then, when you get to the resurrection and the ascension, the
contradictions are laughable. No two gospels can agree on much of
anything, big or small. How was the tomb guarded? Who were the
women who went there? When did they go? Where was the stone? Who
else was at the tomb? Where did the actual resurrection take
place? And the ascension, where and when? And why wouldn't Matthew
think to even mention it?

Do yourself a favor and stop drinking the kookaid. The Bible
doesn't even pretend to be anything but a Paul Bunyan
story. Talking snakes? Walking on water? Thousands of dead people
roaming the streets--yet escaping notice until the gospels were
written down a century later? Give me a break.

Shit, for that matter, the gospels themselves don't even
pretend to be authoritative or eyewitness accounts. Even the
first four verses of Luke make clear that the person writing
this all down is getting it from the people who got it from
the eyewitnesses; in modern language, that's what's called,
``hearsay.''

Still don't believe me? Then why are all the gospels
written as third-person omniscient narratives? Why don't they
even once say something like, ``And then I saw Jesus
ascend to heaven with mine own eyes''? How could the disciples
possibly know what Jesus said and did while they were
asleep, or while he was fighting the devil in the desert, or
anything else like that? If Jesus told them, why didn't they
say, ``And then Jesus told me that, while we slept, he said
such-and-such.''

You're all grown up, now. Long past time to stop believing in
Jesus Claus and the Easter Christ.

" Science has everything to do with faith."not realy. sure, you may have 'faith' that the some formula was tested. But you can also go back a test it yourself."How do you know that you can trust measurable observations?"

by measuring many times under slightly varying circumstances, and have others repeat your experiments.

"How do you know that your experiences and measurements are a valid and accurate representation of reality? "

Any honest scientist will tell you that this is disturbing at
some level, and would consider a proof on the matter one way or
the other to be one of the greatest accomplishments of science
ever. The fact that these are gaps that must (currently) be filled
by faith is an embarrassment, not a point of pride.

And that's what makes science different from religion. Science
does a damn good job with the limited resources we

It's true that the theory of evolution assumes that things will look undesigned (that's methodological naturalism for you). On the other hand, it does not assume that things will look undirected (the difference being that directedness does not imply a designer). The ToE in no way states that life is going to be structurally similar to the results of a hurricane passing through a junkyard, or similar bad metaphor of your choice.

Most reasonably efficient structures, taken without context, are consistent with directedness - the structure is "directed" towards high efficiency by dint of the fact that organisms containing the inefficient versions tend to have fewer surviving offspring. About the only thing I can think of that would be consistent with design but not directedness is a message buried deep in DNA saying "God was here". So far no such signature has been found.

Fortunately for the ToE's scientific status, there are a large number of other ways it could be falsified, and it has repeatedly failed to be disproven by any of them. Compare and contrast with the conjecture of "intelligent design".

Why not China? It is an awesome adventure and everyone would learn from it.

NASA would rather spend their money on a space station, I think they should go back to the moon instead. Send an unmanned mission first maybe, then they could learn from this probe and send another manned mission.

I think there is still much more to learn from the moon. It seems to be a better use of money rather than simply orbiting Earth, which many satellites already do very well.

Someone needs to go to the moon, eh? Why? That's the question NASA couldn't answer in 1973, and that's the question they can't answer now. I'd rather see my tax money go into something that had some chance of being usefull, like the space elevator or solar power satellites.

Because spending tons and tons of money on something that we have neither the technology nor the materials to build is good Slashdot policy. Oh, wait, I forgot, we can build it from Buckminster fullerenes! Nevermind that they're well below the physical tensile strength required to build a space elevator. Nevermind that we can't even build a bridge out of them, or anything else. You have to understand that there's a Slashdot Reality Distortion Field that is generated by too much Science Fiction (don't ge

Most teach that 1+1=2, that phenomem require a cause, and that even if the cause is unknown, the cause is natural origin, not the arbitrary whim of supernatural being. There is a matter of faith in all this. We have faith that the laws of physics have been in effect since the t=0 that some would call the big bang, and will be in effect until such a time the universe might disintegrate. We also have faith that the laws of physics work uniformly throughout the universe. The articles of faiths are called assumptions, and are as often ubiquitous as 1+1=2.

Science may someday become a religion. Science may sometimes hunker down behind it assumptions, basking in the booty that it's greed and prejudice has gained, arguing that others are profiting immorally while it'w own priests are sitting in palaces, wearing funny hats, eating scrumptious meals, handing down edicts, while the rest of world starves and die becuase protective devices and medicines are prohibited due to vague holy sciprt, but that has not happened yet.

What has happened is that science has the metacognition to understand that the dangers lie in the assumptions. Scientists dare each other to prove that the constants are constant. They dare each other to come up with wilder hypothosis, and then destroy each other in the process of proving it.The holy wars are bloodless fueds posited through the journals, not barbaric spats on involving noose, or fire, or rape. The vested interests can be unseated with a simple allegation of impropriety. All work is open to public, not hidden behind doors that never see an opposing opinion.

Now, i am not implying that all is perfect, but sciences subversion of religion is deeper than religion. if one believes in natural cause and effect, then one cannot believe that god destroyed new orleans for being a city of sin. One cannot believe that god sent AIDS to kill the infidels of sub saharan africa. One cannot believe that one or two or a few people have a holy authority to dominate the rest of the world. One cannot believe that killing people who look different of believe different from you will result in your ascent to the promised land.

So, all this is not about evolution. Evolution is applied science, biololgy. Useful, and part of cause and effect, but only important as a stepping stone. This is about various groups of people ability to say I am better because I believe in this piece of writing or this creed. This is about someone saying I have the right to impose my will on other people and damage other people, or discriminate against other people, because I believe that god has given me that right. And if I have to kill people, then god has given me that right as well.

Church, unfortuntaly in many cases, has become the last holdout to a civilized society. Nowhere else can one legally hire on the basis of color or belief, caste out on the basis of belief, and get away with hate speech. The evolution debate is one of the last gasps in a long war perpetuated by those who profit off discrimination and hate. Many more will be hurt because those who are willing to kill for profit are vanquished.

if one believes in natural cause and effect, then one cannot believe that god destroyed new orleans for being a city of sin. One cannot believe that god sent AIDS to kill the infidels of sub saharan africa. One cannot believe that one or two or a few people have a holy authority to dominate the rest of the world. One cannot believe that killing people who look different of believe different from you will result in your ascent to the promised land.

Sure you can. Just depends on what you believe the original "cause" is. Somehow I don't think there is even yet a theory of an ultimate "natural" cause.

Church, unfortuntaly in many cases, has become the last holdout to a civilized society. Nowhere else can one legally hire on the basis of color or belief, caste out on the basis of belief, and get away with hate speech. The evolution debate is one of the last gasps in a long war perpetuated by those who profit off discrimination and hate. Many more will be hurt because those who are willing to kill for profit are vanquished.

Now listen to you. Who's "imposing their will on other people" now? Who's casting their arguments in terms of good versus evil? You want the freedom to propagate your speech, on the public dime no less, yet you would deny the same right to others based on your arbitrary determination of what is "hateful"?

You believe taking money from the public in order to fund an agenda with which you happen to agree is "civilized". And those who are in opposition to your agenda, in fact, who are being targeted by it, disagree. Why should my government support either of you via my taxes?

Nobody never said that you should belive that the uneverse, or life or anything else has a complete explanation. What we want you to do is to try to explain it, what is a completelly different beast. And we also have some nice explanation to encorage you, and they work! But are not complete. If you go into any science, you'll find several people that are awsomed by the fact that we can explain something, what is not a trivial thing.

Most people here seem to agree that this whole Blackberry fiasco is rediculous. From the article:

"NTP, inc. a small patent holding firm of McLean, VA., that maintains the technology behind the popular blackberry infringes on their patents"
This is a textbook case of the abuse occuring in our patent system. NTP doesn't make stuff. They're a patent holding firm. Did RIM steal resources and technology from NTP? NO. Was the idea of a wireless e-mail device a non-obvious one? NONo. Did NTP really create any kind of technology? No. Did RIM come up with the idea independently of NTP, and actually execute on it, actually spending the money to engineer an actual device? Yes. If NTP wants to bitch, I think they should at LEAST have a fucking PRODUCT on the market. Instead, they sit on a non-invention and decide to sue when someone else thinks of it as well, because they think they can just prfit from everyone else's hard work. This is complete bullshit.
What REALLY gets me, is that congress practically runs on Blackberry. Just this past Thanksgiving I happened to be sitting on an airplane right next to my state senator Mitch McConnel. He's blackberrying away like the whole time from Louisville to Philadelphia. (I couldn't help but think of that American Dad episode where they steal Cheney's). But it is pretty well known that almost all of these senators and representatives are using blackberries for their wireless communications. So why aren't they speaking up about this. When a product they they use and rely on daily is threatened out of existance in the US, because of the laws that THEY have enabled, I mean, shouldn't this send some kind of wake-up call that patent law is serious FUCKED UP? I have actually read (please correct if wrong or confirm if really true) that blackberry service would shut down for everyone in the US except except for high ranking government officials, because they rely on the devices so much. Isn't this a huge double standard? Can they really say that our laws outlaw this technology for everyone except for them, because while it infringes patents, it is just too important for us political elite to not have. Obviously this should show that patent law in its current form is NOT contributing or encouraging the progression of science and useful arts.

There's also nothing wrong with a belief in exclusively naturalistic causes, providing you don't try to foist in on school children as being science.
Science is the search for understanding the universe and how things work. We know how some systems work in some cases, and these things should be taught. We should also teach students the limitations of what we know. The things we cannot currently explain, or that seem to contradict the established models (I'm thinking about things we take for granted like gra

Science isn't simply a search, it is a well-defined set of methodologies. Telling kids the holes in theories is one thing, but trying to argue that nebulous designers of unknown origin and unknown powers can be parked in a problematic part of a theory is, in fact, teaching them something that is counter to science. That all theories have problems is not debatable, but are you willing to put a disclaimer on a physics textbook "The theory of gravity has some problems due to the fact that currently no accepted and verifiable quantum theory exists. Some people believe that angels push balls down to Earth."?

Evolution is one of the best supported theories we have, particularly in light of the major studies of the molecular data in the last twenty years. It cannot explain everything and debate still circles around some areas, but are you actually saying that that is reason to call the theory into question?

Science has a very rigorous definition of the word theory, which is more than "something about life is too complex to have evolved by purely natural mechanisms". So far as any ID advocate has made any particular claim (ie. the infamous flagellum claim), real scientists have answered the challenge, and you'll note that those trying to get ID into schools are being condemned by the vast majority of the scientific community and are, themselves, so incautious in their speech that they pretty much reveal themse

Science is things that can be proven or disproven. Religion is things beyond proof. Yes, ID is religion, it is faith based and falls back on that old crap about God moving in mysterious ways."Because I said so" is not science. It does not belong in science classes. Maye you place your faith in Prez Bush, and when he says science classes should teach religion, that's good enough for you. Or maybe you are like these CA nuts who says science is religion and therefore religion should be taught alongside it

sure they can co-exist - one gets taught in science class the other in religion class - very simple.The issue here is different though - UC has a requirement that for entry you have taken classes in A, B, C and D - in this case one of these is a science class that covers certain topics including the theory of evolution and the religious schools are complaining because they decline offer those classes. UC's not turning people down, just requiring them to take make-up classes (BTW UC doesn't have any religiou

Yes, and this entity is called "LAWS OF PHYSICS".Stupid jokes appart : No. It's not possible, because evolution is about understanding the mecanism which made todays deversified life-form (even in your exemple, science is used to understand how the designer did design. In a phylosophical way, modern science is patiently and minutiously dissecting deities). Like everything else in science, it's about finding good models to understand and predict.And Intelligent design is by defition (by the definition of its

What's wrong with believing that the "Intelligent Being" *designed* evolution?

That's not the source of contention. Almost everyone believes or can be easily convinced that organisms adapt (microevolution). The primary arguments are centered around macroevolution (monkey to man, etc) and differing timetables between evolution and creation. To make things a little more complicated, you'll also find a large number of Intelligent Design proponents who do not support creation in 6 days.

To make things a little more complicated, you'll also find a large number of Intelligent Design proponents
who do not support creation in 6 days.

Of course, to make things less complicated again, I don't think there's anything that indicates that each of these six days had to be approximately 86400 seconds long (with a second being the time needed for a cesium-133 atom to perform 9,192,631,770 complete oscillations.)

Really, all you have to do is say that `days were longer back then.' That's the grea

What's wrong with believing that the "Intelligent Being" *designed* evolution? That the Being designed this whole system we live in and all the laws that govern it.

It may be valid to assume that the laws were designed, but the more we find out about evolution the more it looks like it basically happens by itself - it does not need a designer. In that case, why go to the bother of assuming one?

Can you think of some observable aspect of reality that would be different depending on whether the universe was designed vs. not designed?

Frankly, the universe looks pretty darn random and chaotic to me. Thrown in some weird stuff like duck billed platypuses and humans all having appendixes for no apparent reason and the most generous conclusion you can come to is that if there was an Intelligent Designer he wasn't very good at it.

Show a biologist new evidence, and if the prevailing theory doesn't fit, it changes.

In practice, this can take awhile because the biologist is human too. Sometimes it can even take a generation of researchers to displace an outmoded theory. However, your point is well taken: science has a good track record of error-correcting itself. Unlike most religious and political philosophies, science actively seeks to tests its ideas and guard itself against human cognitive error.

For millennia, religion has promised to heal the sick, fertilize the land (or womb), and bring down destruction on the enemy. In the past 400 years a lot of those promises have come to fruition, but somehow it seems that the credit belongs to those who have conducted, funded, and leveraged scientific research. The ability of science to critique itself, to backtrack, to admit error and accommodate new information probably has something to do with its relative success in these areas.

There has been no concrete explanation for the forming of the universe by evolutionists

No, but that doesn't stop scientists from looking for natural explanations for such. There are, at present, a number of theories awaiting sufficient observational data. The ID folks would just say "it's too complex, so don't bother".

I'd like to point out that they are both religions

No. Those who are postulating various naturalistic origins for the universe are generating genuine hypotheses that can be disproven. The relig

I'm a Christian, and that viewpoint makes sense to me. The fact is, the two camps (fanatical Christian, and extreme evolutionist) are both operating under a non-factual system. There has been no concrete explanation for the forming of the universe by evolutionists (i.e. where did the big bang come from, where did the cosmic egg come from, where did the subspace that randomly fluctuated to create the egg come from)

You have demonstrated that you don't even know what the hell evolution is. Evolution is not

Apologies for the angry tone of the following post, it just got my goat somewhat.

There has been no concrete explanation for the forming of the universe by evolutionists

Firstly, there's no such word as "evolutionist". The correct term, if you're talking about someone who studies the scientific discipline in question, is "evolutionary biologist". If you're talking about someone who accepts evolution as the most likely explanation for our being here, the term is atheist or agnostic (depending on details).

And thus to my second point. The theory of evolution and associated bioscience have nothing to do with how the universe started. None. Nada. Zip. They have nothing to do with stellar evolution, despite the name. They have nothing to do with how the Earth was formed. They don't even have anything to do with how life began - the correct term for that is abiogenesis and it's closer to chemistry than biology. The only reason anyone bothers to conflate the scientific discipline of evolutionary biology with this vast range of related subjects is so they can bundle them all together, slap a label saying "ATHEIST" (or, more likely, "ATHIEST") on them and then whine loudly about people teaching this pile of "dogma" in schools. Wonderful straw man there.

Similarly, there is no such thing as Darwinism. The only people who advocate "Darwin: right or wrong?" as a valid ideological choice are those who wish to set up a false dichotomy. Which historically has been proponents of creationism or intelligent design.

Extreme evolutionism is more fanatical than based on science, with many varied beliefs and varied "scientific" explanations for the same things.

On the whole, these "beliefs" are falsifiable. When a conjecture as to how things work/worked is falsifiable (and preferably meets a couple of other standards), we call it a scientific hypothesis. You may have heard the term? It's that thing that Intelligent Design isn't until it demonstrates a method by which it can be falsified. In the same vein, "God did it" can never be a hypothesis if God is assumed to be infinitely powerful, as such a God can do whatever the heck he wants. Now, this may even be the way the universe works. There may be an all-powerful God who takes great pleasure in planting random dinosaur skeletons and tinkering with bacterial flagella. But that conjecture sure as hell isn't scientific and hence shouldn't be taught in a science class.

Incidentally, there's nothing wrong with there being several different explanations for the same data. But until they're falsifiable they're called conjectures, and until we have sufficient examples of them dramatically failing to be falsified they're called hypotheses. Only once they've been through the white-hot flame of detailed scientific enquiry are they referred to as theories.

The teachers could present, say, the top 3 worldwide views on the subject, and allow the students to choose.

I have no problem with that. As long as they do it in a Religious Studies class. If they try to do it in a science class, they've completely misunderstood the nature of science and need to be sacked for the children's sake - it'd be like getting a Holocaust denyer to teach 20th century history. Science isn't about "choosing" what's right. It's about suggesting what might be right, then scrutinising it, poking holes in it, looking high and low for contradictory data (and there must be the potential for contradictory data, otherwise your conjecture is scientifically nihilistic) and then, when you've given up in despair of ever disproving the damn thing, accepting that it might conceivably be an accurate reflection of reality.

Is there a single religion in the world willing to go through that baptism of fire? If it did, and passed, wouldn't that rather destroy the idea of "having faith", anyway? Answers of "No" or "Yes" respectively indicate that religions have no place in the science classroom.

Sorry, ID is most definitely NOT a hypothesis. A Hypothesis can be falsified - whereas the CONCEPT or IDEA of ID can't be falsified, so it quite definitely does not get the dignity of being called a hypothesis.
It's a crackpot belief - nothing more.
Please don't get me started about the "I'm entitled to my belief" thing because it gets long...
The crux of the statement is that you have an entitlement. Unfortunately, every true entitlement also means a corresponding duty. The right to life for example, ha

I recall reading a post from a previous thread about ID where they discussed what the Bible actually says about God(s).Commandments #1"I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me..."

Anywone who's studied logic can tell you that this doesn't exclude the existence of other Gods, it merely states that the Guy who spoke to Moses shall be top dog.

(The Muslims have that angle covered because a central tenent of their faith i

Sophistry.The real argument about creationism (or, more frequently, ID) not being science is that it doesn't conform to the scientific method. That is, scientific research generally has these steps:

1. Observe something about the world around you2. Hypothesize why those observations might be so3. Predict what other observations the hypothesis supports4. Test those predictions to determine whether the hypothesis is false